The researchers cheekily refer to their creation as Vuvuzela, after the loud plastic horns that became infamous during the 2010 FIFA World Cup in Safe Africa, in that it thwarts snoopers by creating noise on the network so that they can’t detect what’s being passed from one person to another. Vuvuzela source code is available here.

Network World’s Tim Greene wrote in December that “The system uses encryption and a set of servers to conceal whether or not parties are participating in text-based conversations.” It doesn’t need to anonymize the actual participants in a conversation since “all the communications from clients to the servers are triple-wrapped in encryption,” he writes.

THE TRUTH ABOUT EMAIL

Researchers have published a report that shows that email security goes a long way toward protecting passwords, financial data and more, but still isn't close to foolproof.

One big problem is that the security protocols bolted on to the original Internet architecture aren't universally implemented on servers, even though big players like Google have adopted such methods (Note: Google worked on this study with researchers from the University of Michigan and University of Illinois.). Even advanced encryption can be corrupted.

University of Washington researchers don't appreciate Wi-Fi routers slacking off: The devices have enough untapped energy that they can be used to power devices in addition to connecting them.

Their Power Over Wi-Fi system harvests energy from Wi-Fi signals to power Internet of Things devices such as temperature sensors, cameras and fitness trackers -- the kinds of things nobody wants to have to plug in to power up. Best of all, PoWiFi does this without messing with the quality of Wi-Fi communications.